It appears to me that the commenter is attempting to do one of two things. Option 1: the commenter is a right wing whack job that isn’t violent, but likes to engage in outlandish rhetoric. Option 2: the commenter is a liberal who is trying to discredit conservatives by acting like option 1.
As you can see from the story, the commenter is actually a union teacher from Oak Creek, but it gets more interesting than that. The commenter was also once the president of his local teachers’ union. This leads me to believe that Option 2 is the truth. This commenter is just a liberal union teacher who was trying to make conservatives look bad by pretending to be one and acting like an imbecile.
What did this stalwart of the community do that resulted in his being arrested?
An Oak Creek High School teacher who allegedly praised the actions of the Columbine School shooters and threatened local teachers on a Web site blog was arrested Thursday. The 46-year-old Cudahy man was arrested with the assistance of Oak Creek and Cudahy police departments after West Bend police were notified of a threatening post on Nov. 16.
The first comment on this blog post was pretty good.
Reading your perspective, I guess it would be hard to impute any kind of “criminal intent” on the part of the actor, but I do get a certain sense of satisfaction in seeing such a troll “outed”. I feel sorry for good teachers who might be smeared by this.
Hear hear.
Update, 12/5/07: The teacher is not being charged with any crimes. The 1st Amendment protects idiots, too, as well as the good guys. Sadly, this comment rings true:
The first time you ignore one of these off the wall threats, and the guy starts shooting. All of a sudden the authorities weren't doing there job. Sounds like it's cover your a-- time. And I don't blame them in this day and age.
Thus the arrest is explained well.
Wait a minute. Did the owner of this B&S blog really say that other right-wing whack jobs exist, and that they comment this way?
ReplyDeleteIt only goes to show you - on many conservative blogs, you'll have a hard time telling the difference between the real posts and the fake ones. This idiot teacher was merely trying to blend in by imitating the spelling, typing and logic skills of many other B&S commenters. Read a few comments to find other examples. I can't wait for other bloggers to find more examples of vaguely threatening or misanthropic rants on other Wisconsin politics blogs.
The deeper and far funnier story, in a karmic or ironic sort of way, is that the blog owner, Owen, had led an AFP-sponsored robo-calling effort against West Bend's school referendum a month or so ago. School officials might've been eager to pin a threat on a B&S commenter. Who knew it would turn out to be a teacher from a different school district?
Sure, you don't have an expectation of deep privacy, but the guys who run that B&S blog also abused this power for fun and profit. I've seen them "out" someone when they didn't like what they were saying. For example, B&S's Owen revealed that someone was posting from a governmental IP address in order to discredit the person's opinion. Nice, huh?
Yet in another case , they don't reveal their IP evidence when it would clearly prove or disprove their slurs against a commenter - me. I comment on B&S's comments on my blog.
"Other" right wing wackjobs? He implied that some exist, which is obviously true, but I don't know who you mean when you talk about "others".
ReplyDeleteIt seems you have some agenda or other axe to grind. What is it? I ask because you focus on the blog and not on the teacher who used that blog to give all of us teachers a black eye by making a jackass out of himself.
You seem to have an issue with conservative blogs. I don't understand that, because my experience is the opposite of yours. Liberal blogs are foul places, in my experience.
To each his own, I guess.
If you want some irony, deep, karmic or otherwise, let's just consider the maturity and intellectual depth necessary to rationalize the Photoshopping of kitten's heads onto the objects of your disdain. Plato's probably weeping with jealousy and Sun Tzu nodding with approval.
ReplyDeleteA pin-head drops a lit bag of dog crap of a post into someone's blog and you find something to blame in the recipient. Gee, I wonder if there's a subtly hidden agenda at work there?
So let's balance it all out: a commenter writes a post that, in the eyes of the blog owner, sounds like a "right wing whack job." Nothing happens. No one speaks out about it, no one takes it as a threat. It's not out of the ordinary, apparently.
ReplyDeleteBut a teacher or admin gets suspicious, decides to call it a threat, wants to slur Boots and Sabers. But it backfires! It turns out it's a teacher.
Gotta go, Sun Tzu's on the line.